Renée M. Popovits

Founder and Principal Attorney of Popovits Law Group

A few words about Renée M. Popovits

Renée M. Popovits, Principal Attorney, founded the law firm of Popovits Law Group in 1997 and has been a practicing health care attorney since 1989. Ms. Popovits has represented behavioral healthcare providers, physician practice clients, research organizations, governmental entities and trade associations in corporate transactions, corporate compliance, confidentiality, licensure, reimbursement, contracting, managed care, human resources, data-sharing, electronic records, HIPAA and public policy matters. Ms. Popovits has also addressed a wide variety of ethical issues, including issues facing behavioral healthcare staff when providing counseling to clients, ethical conflicts when acting as peer resources to recovering individuals while also acting in the role of counselor, as well as ethical and legal issues faced by tax-exempt organizations, not-for-profit boards of directors and their officers. Ms. Popovits has represented several treatment providers in the State of Illinois and throughout the United States and was General Counsel of BHS Management Corp., a company serving multi-state human service and behavioral health care providers. Prior to this she was a healthcare attorney at the Chicago firm of Coffield, Ungaretti & Harris.

Ms. Popovits is also one of the founding members of the Patient Protection Coalition, a multidisciplinary group devoted to analyzing and improving the federal substance abuse confidentiality regulations in the era of electronic health records and is also a member of the Illinois Health Information Exchange Legal Executive Committee and a Co-Chair of the Substance Abuse Legal Workgroup. Ms. Popovits has served on Governor Edgar’s Forum on Substance Abuse, Governor Blagojevich’s Labor Transition Subcommittee on Disability Issues and currently is the Chairperson of the Women’s Committee of the Illinois Advisory Council on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependence and has served on this statutorily-created committeefor 21 years. Ms. Popovits assisted in the drafting of numerous legislative plans establishing a statewide blueprint for women’s services that were developed for the Illinois General Assembly pursuant to legislative mandate. She served as Co-Chairperson of the DHS-DASA/DCFS Advisory Committee for five years and is a current member of the interagency committee and its Title IV-E Waiver Subcommittee. She is a member of the IADDA Financial Advisory Workgroup and served on the DASA Managed Care Committee. Ms. Popovits has also served on the Catholic Charities Legal Advisory Committee and on the Board of Advisors, as a Board member with the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers (“NAATP”) and as an NAATP Managed Care Task Force Co-Chair, where she also contributed to the Managed Care Tool Kit. Ms. Popovits also serves on the Governors State University Addiction Studies Advisory Board. In 2002, Ms. Popovits received the Compassion in Action Award from Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago. Ms. Popovits is a member of the American Health Lawyers Association, the Illinois Association of Health Care Attorneys and the Illinois State Bar Association. Ms. Popovits was also recently awarded the 2011 Dr. C. Vincent Bakeman Memorial Award by IADDA for her advocacy and parity work on behalf of the behavioral healthcare field.

Ms. Popovits received her undergraduate degree from Saint Xavier College, cum laude and her law degree from DePaul University College of Law, with honors. While in law school, she served on the DePaul Law Review and was the Assistant Editor of the Journal of Health and Hospital Law, a publication of the American Academy of Hospital Attorneys. She also served as an adjunct professor at DePaul University where she taught masters level students Introduction to Health Law.